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Abstract
The article explores the issue of youth political participation in Pakistan. In the light of the attention devoted by the Pakistani press to the youth vote in the 2013 Pakistani elections, this article discusses young Pakistanis’ articulation of their views on mainstream politics and their views of the state, and attempts to answer the question as to why young people in Pakistan are disillusioned with mainstream politics. The article focuses in particular on the perceptions held by those in their late teens to late 20s. Since 59 per cent of Pakistan's population is below the age of 24 and overall over 67 per cent of the population is under 30, their views on the state, rights, responsibilities and their concept of citizenship are a window into how Pakistan is likely to develop. The focus of the article is on voices that are rarely heard and which stand in stark contrast to the solutions offered by the institutional literature. The research is located in the wider discussion of the concept of citizenship and builds on previous work on citizenship in Pakistan.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Tania Saeed for support and help during the revision process, Riaz Kamlani for help with accessing TCF schools, as well as Arifa Bhagat, and Adnan Dastegeer for research assistance in the field. My thanks also go to the BC for allowing me to use some of the data I collected during a project evaluation. I am very grateful for the comments of the two anonymous reviewers who have helped to shape the final version of this article.
Notes
1. Fifty-nine per cent of Pakistan's population is below the age of 24 and, overall, over 67% of the population is under 30 (Yusuf, Citation2011).
2. In the absence of local bodies/governments and other organised setups, communities can only be reached through NGOs and philanthropic organisations. Often, this is driven by individuals who focus their energies on their local community – which is sometimes religiously or ethnically driven, but at other times just the local neighbourhood.
3. A part of the problem of formal politics in Pakistan is that 2013 was the first democratic transition after a government completed its term in office since independence in 1947. This means that voting is not necessarily seen as a means of affecting government action – unlike in India for example.
4. This article is not meant to be comparative; however, it is noteworthy that in two of Pakistan's neighbouring countries – Afghanistan and India, youth political participation and political literacy seem to be much higher.
In Afghanistan, for example, nearly two thirds of all Afghans are under 25 and constituted the largest voting bloc in the April 2014 elections. According to Abdul Waheed Wafa, executive director of the Afghanistan Centre at Kabul University, the young people were queuing to get their voter ID cards (Wendle, Citation2014).In India, the youth turned out in record numbers to vote in the April/ May 2014 elections. According to the Hindustan Times, 140 million more people turned up at the polling stations compared to the 2009 elections and many of these were from the youth (Chauhan, Citation2014).
5. Civics was taught as a separate subject in schools until the 1980s, along with History and Geography as separate subjects.
6. Recent research by Shams (Citation2012) shows that the gross enrolment in the state education sector in the Punjab has dropped from 11.296 million in 2005–2006 to 10.679 million in 2009–2010; 32 out of 36 districts have lower enrolment figures in 2010 than in 2005 and there are also increased dropout rates from 32% in 2007 to 41% in 2009. On a district-by-district level, figures are even worse as 8 out of 36 districts have a <50% drop out rate (Shams, Citation2012). A large number of drop outs and the reduction of children in the state sector are due to an increase of children accessing private provision. In part, this is due to poorer families emulating the middle classes and choosing schools they feel better meet the needs of their children (Lall, Citation2012b); in part, there has been an active policy by the Punjab government to support families opting out of the state system by providing them with a certain amount of money to cover the fees.
7. http://www.youthparliament.pk/. The Youth Parliament was created: to engage youth in Pakistan in healthy discourse and expose them to the democratic process and practices, PILDAT launched the project of the first-ever Youth Parliament Pakistan in 2007. Members of Youth Parliament Pakistan are selected for duration of a year at a time. The first batch of Youth Parliament Pakistan was selected in 2007 and from thereon, Youth Parliament has had three batches so far including 2007 batch, 2008–2009 batch and 2009–2010 batch. This is not the only Youth Parliament – see http://www.pkhope.com/youth-ambassador-of-geo-jang-sms-registration-ali-moeen-nawazish/.
8. The PTI promised 25% of all parliamentary tickets at the national and provincial levels to the youth – which is also why it is seen as the most pro-youth party.
9. PILDAT (Citation2012, p. 3).
Youth should come up with a united front, irrespective of what party they support, to campaign for the trust of people on the elections.
Youth, particularly students, should campaign at different levels to help people realise the power of their vote.
Groups of students should persuade other students within their institutions to cast vote on the day of polling.
Since youngsters are enthusiastic, they should encourage their families to go to cast vote on the day of voting.
10. These ideologies were led by mainstream political parties and student unions were an extension of these parties operating at the university level – Jamiat was the militant student wing of the mainstream political party Jamat-e-Islami present in almost every university across Pakistan. The Mohajir Student Front was the student wing of Muttahida Qaumi Movement at Karachi University and similarly, Peoples' Student Federation represented the Pakistan Peoples Party.
11. Political parties engaging students have completely misused them in the past, destroying academic culture by creating issues of discipline in colleges and universities.
12. There is a difference between rural and urban youth which the fieldwork revealed and is discussed later. It seem that the data Khan refers to are largely taken from urban areas as the youth in the rural areas are actively involved in politics, pursuing local MPs, getting involved in mobilisation and demonstrations.
13. These figures also include the deaths of security forces operating in Swat and South Waziristan.
14. One school was located in a Karachi slum and one school was located in a semi-urban area in Punjab.
15. The questions asked on the survey were: ‘How politically aware are you?’ and ‘How politically active are you?’ This was followed by a section where respondents were asked to elaborate on what they understood by being ‘politically active’.
16. Government, private, philanthropic, madrassa or higher education institution.
17. In the female madrassa, almost all girls said that they saw politics as a man's responsibility and wanted no part in it; in the male madrassa, many boys said that they had a preference for a military government.
18. See also http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Politics/01-Apr-2011/Quit-Pakistan-syndrome-growing; http://pkonweb.com/2012/05/pm-gilani-to-pakistanis-why-dont-they-leave-whos-stopping-them/.
19. Madrassas lie at the low end of the political activity spectrum. Students there are of the view that if they study in a madrassa, their entire interest should be in religion. Many said that they are also aware of worldly events because social science and religion are both compulsory. But they see politics as a completely worldly thing and believe that in the ‘early era’ governments were run without politics. With the increasing numbers of young people of all classes attending secondary madrassas, these attitudes indeed show a worrying trend of political disengagement.
20. ‘biraderi’ – clans, tribes, castes, sects, which are all crucial to Pakistani politics.
21. In general, families prefer their children not to go into social sciences due to lack of careers. Families prefer their children to study maths, engineering, medicine and other science-related subjects.
22. Imran Khan, Pakistan's former cricket captain, comes from outside the traditional political establishment; however, he is part of the elite. He is seen as having delivered on two counts: cricket and building a cancer hospital in his mother's memory; this has given him credibility on the political scene.
23. Khan (Citation2012).
24. However, the student President of the ISF was killed in an act of target killing; so, this only confirms the fears of the youth that being a part of politics is risky business. Retrieved May 22, 2012, from http://www.defence.pk/forums/national-political-issues/129729-waseem-baloch-killed-pti-isf.html.
25. PTI's official website. Retrieved May 22, 2012, from http://www.insaf.pk/Forum/tabid/53/forumid/42/tpage/1/view/topic/postid/83416/Default.aspx#83416.
26. See, for example: http://www.upi.com/UPI-Next/2013/05/09/Pakistani-Youth-Vote-Could-be-Critical-Analysts-Say/31364154611953/; http://tribune.com.pk/story/530330/election-2013-the-youth-vote/; http://tribune.com.pk/story/546292/to-vote-or-not-to-vote-will-the-youth-decide-the-countrys-future/; http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/201305080011-0022739; http://tribune.com.pk/story/530330/election-2013-the-youth-vote/; http://dawn.com/2013/04/12/the-youth-vote-more-hype-than-reality/; http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/editors-picks/03-Apr-2013/pakistan-s-youth-vote-explained; http://dawn.com/2013/03/20/youth-to-play-deciding-role-in-upcoming-elections-shows-ecp-data/; http://www.nation.com.pk/E-Paper/Lahore/2013-05-12/page-22/detail-4.
27. National Government – 71% rated unfavourably
National Assembly – 67% rated unfavourably
Political Parties – 69% rated unfavourably
British Council NGBB data pack, slide 13.
28. A CNIC applicant is required to produce the following documents at the time of application: Birth Certificate or Old NIC or Matriculation Certificate or CNICs of immediate/blood relatives Citizenship certificate issued by Ministry of Interior (http://www.nadra.gov.pk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6&Itemid=9).
29. http://ecp.gov.pk/Misc?GE-2013_Graphs/05_national_assembly_turnouts.jpg; www.dawn.com/news/796759/youth-to-play-eciding-role-in-upcoming-eleftions-shows-ecp-data.
30. Voting data by age are not consolidated centrally. Age-specific data are kept in each district separately.
31. Dawn newspaper archives for 24 September 2007. Retrieved May 22, 2012, from http://archives.dawn.com/2007/09/24/welcome.htm.
32. Because these are not organised protests as such and people, mostly poor, gather on their own with no one leading them.
33. One can argue that Nawar Sharif's win in the May 2013 elections underlines this point. Many wanted change, but were equally reluctant to give it to the PTI who they see as inexperienced.